Most Admired Men/Women of 2009

The latest USA Today/Gallup poll shows it like this:

Women
1. Hillary Clinton
2. Sarah Palin
3. Oprah Winfrey
4. Michelle Obama
5. Condoleeza Rice

Men
1. Barack Obama
2. George W. Bush
3. Nelson Mandela
4. Glenn Beck
5. Pope Benedict XVI

Safe Enough to Fly

I understand that the system broke down with the failed terrorist would-be attack last week, but I hope this doesn't mean the TSA is going to make life even harder for regular travelers. Most of what they do now is for show, to demonstrate they care. People who fly get that there are certain risks, like someone accidentally hitting the "wings fall off" switch. The Department of Homeland Security can look at what happened and what they can improve, but no reason to punish the rest of the country over it.

My 2 1/2 Cents on This Week's Politics

Cent #1 - Jobs have been lost every month for the past two years. What's been the constant during those past two years? Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. Celebration was in order that ONLY 11,000 jobs were lost in November. I'm surprised when I find out how many friends and neighbors are unemployed. It makes me grateful for my own job, but the longer this many people stay unemployed, the more likely more incumbants will be booted, not just in the general election, but in the primaries.

In Utah, we have Sen. Bob Bennett, who is running for his fourth term in 2010. When he first ran in 1992, he campaigned on a pledge to only serve two terms. In 1999, mere months after being re-elected to his second term, he said he changed his mind. He knows how the system is geared toward incumbants. Once he got in, he knew he could stay as long as he wanted.

But something's changed in the political wind. The economy tanked, and we're still fighting two wars where people are asking, "Remind me why we're still there?" If any of Bennett's challengers prove to be remotely serious, he may not even be on the ballot next November.

Cent #2 - The more I read about the history of Israel and Palestine, the more I wonder how the U.S. became allied with Israel. Not saying they should be allies with Palestine instead, but there's been so much bloodshed for so many decades, and Israel, fighting for its right to exist, has committed several atrocies against thousands of people. Now with hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu in there, I don't expect peace anytime soon, but I do believe a two-state solution with an independent Palestine is the only way to go.

To both sides, it's a holy war. Nothing holy about it.

Cent #2 1/2 - Barbara Walters' Ten Most Fascinating People contained some good candidates, but not good interviews. I'd rather have one of ABC's affiliates have a three-hour special, I DVR it, and then I can choose which ones I actually want to listen to. (That would be a big fast-forward on Lady Gaga and Kate Gosselin, for starters). Barbara only interviewed eight of her nominees, but they still made for quick, superficial interviews where I didn't really learn anything.

Revoke Gore's Oscar?

In light of the flurry of evidence the past few weeks that scientists have been fudging the numbers on "global warming", two Academy members are demanding that Gore give his award back he won for An Inconvenient Truth.

Gay Conservatives debate Gay Marriage

Andrew Sullivan is for gay marriage; Charles Winecoff is for civil unions.

Al Gore - global warming profiteer

If you want to talk about combatting pollution, I'm all for it, but this global warming hysteria has gone on long enough. Of course Al Gore's made it his life mission. It's going to make him a billionaire.

Mr. Gore is poised to become the world's first "carbon billionaire," profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

Lies About Rush Limbaugh

There are two false quotes that have entered the talking-points of news when talking about Rush Limbaugh. His enemies love to smear him as a racist. Is he a racist? He says he's not and never has been. There are some quotes that might make people judge otherwise, but there are certain quotes that are horrible, that make him sound like a contemptible racist. Trouble is, he never said them.

The two worst quotes of his that are true are the bone-through-the-nose one and the Donovan McNabb one. There is no audio of it, but he once admitted in an interview his biggest regret was when he was a DJ in the early 1970's, he got short with a caller and told him to pull the bone out of his nose.

The other is one that isn't really racist, but the hard left loves to accuse the hard right of being racist no matter what. Rush once said on ESPN he thought the press was giving Donovan McNabb a free pass because they wanted to see a black quarterback do well. No one on the set called him on it, it was a non-issue until Media Matters called it to everyone's attention three days later.

The two ones that are false: there's a quote out there that Rush once said slavery had its merits. There's another where Rush praised MLK's killer. It looks like both stemmed from a Wikipedia entry by a contributor called Cobra. They were later removed, but like a virus, the falsehood entered the ether, and thousands just accepted it as true.

"Racist" is turning into "Nazi" for me, which is to say, one passionate political side uses it against the other so much, it doesn't really mean anything anymore. And there are situations where the word(s) should still matter.

Sean Hannity vs. Michael Moore = Civil Discussion

There is hope for our Republic after all.

I watched it last night. I thought Moore had the better argument about two-thirds of the time. If Moore did his movies with a tone more like this, he'd expand his fanbase. I still like Moore movies; I just know I have to watch with large grains of salt and then hit the fact-check sites afterwards.

I was surprised how rigidly to the talking points Hannity stuck, but there's a reason that of the right-wing talking-head radio-TV guys, he's one of my least favorite.

Sunday round-tables

I watched the first five minutes of Fox News's Hannity and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow the other day. Both had the same lead story, both had completely different takes on it. It was on Rep. Alan Grayson saying Republicans health care plan wants you to die quickly. Two parallel universes. Naturally Hannity called Grayson's statement "ridiculous, outrageous" while Maddow seemed to be okay with it, with a headline of "Pot, meet Kettle" that Republicans were calling on Grayson to apologize because they thought Rep. Joe Wilson apologizing once for his "You Lie!" outburst was enough. (Never mind the Democrats who thought Grayson's statement was fine but wanted to censure Wilson.)

Anyway, I realized why I hardly ever watch cable news but I like watching the Sunday news-show round-tables. Talking-heads with different opinions are forced to sit in the same room and be nice. In fact I'll rarely watch the people being interviewed on the Sunday shows; it's just spin. But the talking-heads spin has to bounce off each other. If Michelle Malkin goes on Hannity, she can be as abrasive as she wants, but when she goes on ABC's This Week and sits with George Stephanopoulos, George Will and Donna Brazile, she expresses herself in a more polite fashion. Janeane Garofalo may be allowed to talk about Republicans as sub-humans on Keith Olbermann, but if she sat with David Gregory, Joe Scarborough and Eugene Robinson on Meet the Press, she'd probably try to sound a little less like a Rwandan propaganda artist (which Bette Midler also accused Glenn Beck of being.)

My political opinions are always molding, evolving, some issues I care about, some I just don't. I'm Republican, I consider myself a rational conservative, a center-right guy in what's basically a center-right country. Hard-righties can compare Obama to Hitler, hard-lefties can compare Bush to Hitler; it really doesn't matter and it just exposes them.

Bush tried coining the phrase "compassionate conservative" which I guess means cut taxes, increase spending, grow government, and launch two wars without an end game. Obama said the time for change is come, which must mean to spend more than all previous administrations in history combined. All we can do is hope for high turnover in the House and Senate in 2010, and that reporters will act like reporters and not stenographers.

Bush & Torture

Andrew Sullivan's open letter to Pres. Bush on torture is one I'd hope Dubya will read and answer.

Beck, ACORN, Health Care Protests

The past week or so has been very strange with media coverage. Glenn Beck is now the most vicious, ruthless puppet-master out there. Huh? Beck's been spending weeks investigating the people in Pres. Obama's White House, and his reporting has actually resulted in Van Jones resigning, another WH player getting demoted, and now citizen-journalists exposed ACORN. But most of the media is only reporting the parts they have to, and they're getting buried. It's been bizarre.

I first discovered Beck a few years ago. He had a talk-radio show, and he had a show on CNN Headline News. I watched parts of his show every once in a while. In non-election years I hardly ever watch more than a few minutes of any of the cable news show each week, but Beck had a fun sense about him.

Now in early 2008 he got a little more doomsday to him. He barked for months that the economy was going to collapse. And then it did. He railed against TARP until he decided to support it at the last minute because the financial people he talked to said the US economy would collapse without it.

Talk radio in general has taken on a paranoid turn since Obama won the election. Rush Limbaugh kept saying Obama's a cold, mean guy; Laura Ingraham's called him a prime candidate to replace Jimmy Carter as the worst president ever. Sean Hannity's been Hannity. He's usually in a good mood and will say with a smile he believes Obama's destroying America. he makes me wish I could get Colmes's show on the radio around here.

Beck is frightened by the people Obama surrounds himself with. I can't defend him saying he thinks Obama's a racist and has a "deep-seated hatred of white people." That was just a dumb thing to say. Beck threw meat to the critics and they chewed. About a month ago, Newsweek had two different columns lumping Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin together as examples of right-wing crazies.

So now Beck's had an increase in death threats and had to increase his security. There hasn't been much disputing of his reporting, because what he's reporting isn't getting played in most of the media. But after Van Jones, Beck had his first "scalp" said The Daily Beast. Keith Olbermann demanded dirt on Beck.

And when ACORN was exposed for trying to help a "pimp" and "prostitute" get housing, lie to the IRS, and even ship in underage El Salvadorean girls for prostitution, well that only got play on Fox News and the internet. It seems like kind of a big story.

Which is a long walk to the health care protests in D.C. over the weekend. Naturally when NBC mentioned it, they found a sign that said "Hitler Gave Good Speeches Too." Will those right-wingers never learn? But what got a lot more play was Joe Wilson's "You Lie!" outburst. Champagne corks must've popped at the DNC after they found themselves a new poster-boy villain.

How many were at the protests? "Tens of thousands" said NBC. The UK press said 2 million.

Look, I want Pres. Obama to succeed. He'll succeed if he gets a health-care bill that does more good than harm. He'll succeed if the unemployment rate back to the 5% range. And when Wilson shouted what he did, I though on one hand, that's stupid. On the other hand, I'd like to see the president and Congress engage in a British-style back and forth every few months where Congress asks the questions and the president has to answer. Woulda been good to have under Bush too.

I go to many sources to get my news. I think sane Americans should, to be informed. The ones who reject 100% of what Fox News says are blinding themselves. Fox is biased, absolutely, but there are facts in there. I'll watch MSNBC to see Joe Scarborough or Chris Matthews too. I'll watch CNN, I'll flip through Politico, RealClearPolitics, Daily Beast, Drudge, Googlenews, even HuffPo sometimes to see what the left-wing spin of the day is.

I also realized that I like watching the Sunday newsshow round tables, because it's one of the only times pundits who disagree will sit together and have a civil discussion.

A Pox on Both Their Houses

Camille Paglia's unimpressed with either party right now.

Keep this kid away from your daughters

Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin's grandchild, is turning out to be quite the scumbag.

RIP Sen. Ted Kennedy

I just find it too bad one of the last pieces of legislation he was aiming for was getting rid of the 2004 Massachusetts law he supported. Hopefully even though he's passed away, the Massachusetts legislature won't do anything as shamelessly hypocritical as to wipe away their old 2004 law.

Before a legislator votes on anything, he should ask himself, "Would I be okay with this law regardless of who is in power?" If the answer is "No" then their vote should be "No."

Intelligent Health-Care Debate

On one side, the Democrats wants to pass universal health care. On the other side, the Republicans want to keep government out of health care. Now the best thing for Americans to do at this time would clearNAZI NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! GOEBBELS!! NAZI NAZI SWASTIKA!!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!!

Whoa, okay that person sat down. Now we live in a society where health care costs are rising, premiums are rising, and yet we keep NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!!

Excuse me. I realize to show up to a debate, it helps to have passion, but the passionate ones on both sides are the fringes. Can we reasonable people try to actually solve this NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI NAZI NAZI HITLER!! NAZI SWASTIKA GOOSESTEPPING BROWNSHIRTS!!!

Oh, I've run out of time.

Sen. Kennedy wants to change his own law

Ted Kennedy wanted Massachusetts succession law to be what it is now because he was worried then Republican governor Mitt Romney could appoint a Republican senator for Massachusetts if Democratic senator John Kerry won the 2004 Presidential election. But it seems lawmakers aren't willing to rewrite the law back and forth every few years.

Millions of fringe Americans

Let's play fast and loose with some numbers. The last paragraph in Kuhn's article on fringe partisans rang true for me. I have friends I would consider fanatic Democrats and fanatic Republicans. So if 34% of voters call themselves Democrats and 24% of voters call themselves Republican, and 35% of those Democrats are fanatics (Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand, Glenn Beck is evil, etc.), and 28% of those Republicans are fanatics (Obama was born in Kenya, Chris Matthews is Satan). Now if there were 100,000,000 voters (I'm probably way-off there but let's keep it round and simple), 34 million are Democrats and of them, that makes 11.9 million fanatic lefties. These are the people who wouldn't mind Sarah Palin dying in a plane crash, who visit DailyKos every day, believe everything MediaMatters says, watch Keith Olbermann every night, who think Dick Cheney is more evil than Joseph Stalin, and are quick to hate anyone with an (R) by their name. Of the 24 million Republicans, 6.72 million won't miss Sean Hannity, get all their news from Newsmax and WorldNetDaily, think Obama secretly wants to turn us into the Soviet States of America, that the government will play eugenics on old people if the health care bill passes, and are quick to hate anyone with a (D) by their name. And both of them are quick to see the mote in the eyes of their brethren across the aisle without noticing the beam in their own.

So based on these flimsy numbers, we have a lot of crazies. But if almost 19% of the electorate is extremist, is it really crazy? Is it really fringe? Maybe this lends some light as to why so many communites online that deal with politics are so mean-spirited and nasty. And I go back to this paragraph:

A few years ago, an Emory psychologist scanned the brains of self-described partisans. Partisans were able to notice the hypocritical statements of the opposing candidate but not the inconsistencies of their preferred candidate. Ideology, it was determined, showed effects similar to drug addiction.

Now there is an ebb and flow to power, and also party affiliation. The Democrats gained in 1992, and lost in 1994, gained in 1996, lost in 2000, lost in 2004, gained big in 2006 and 2008.

Remember how lost and disorganized the Democrats seemed in 2004? Then they found a leader they could rally behind in Obama (and benefitted from Bush's failures with Abu Ghraib, Katrina, and the recession). The Republicans are now where the Dems were in 2004, except their 2008 might not happen until 2012 or 2016 or 2020, depending when the good leader emerges.

We Need a Bipartisan Lottery

This would be one of my dreams. I absolutely, whole-heartedly believe our country would be better off if we adopted this.

The first week of December 2010, the Democratic and Republican chair-people schedule when their primaries and caucuses are going to be. Not where, but when.

Let's say they set it up this way:

First Week of January 2011 - one state

Second Week of January 2011 - one state

Third Week of January 2011 - one state

Fourth Week of January 2011 - three states

and then from there, have one state on Monday and then Super Tuesday the first week of February 2011 with seven states, and it goes from there.

Then do a lottery. And every four years, the lottery happens again, to determine the state order. The order's determined a year in advance so states can get ready. And this way, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina will stop picking the presidential nominees each year, and our entire energy economy will not be based on corn.

Examples:
I just put 2011 through a simulator and got this order:

1. Connecticut
2. Texas
3. Utah
4. Oregon, Washington, West Virginia
7. Wisconsin
8. (SuperTuesday) - New Mexico, New York, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Vermont, Wyoming

And for 2015, this order:

1. Virginia
2. Louisiana
3. Vermont
4. Montana, Nebraska, West Virginia
7. Connecticut
8. (SuperTuesday) - Alabama, Connecticut, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah

So, it may be some states appear in the top seven two election cycles in a row, but that's different than now, when it's the same states dictating every four years what the rest of the country is going to do.

How dare Sarah Palin be normal!

Politico's Roger Simons assesses her sins.

My 2-1/2 Cents on the Weekend in Politics

MY 2-1/2 CENTS ON THE WEEKEND POLITICS

Cent #1 - Unemployment is now at 9.5%. Joe Biden said everyone underestimated how bad the economy was. (Not everyone...) The stimulus package saved government jobs and created new ones, but the private sector is getting decimated. Yes, Pres. Bush got this thing rolling. Yes, Hank Paulson did his buddies at Goldman Sachs a favor by letting their competitor Lehman Brothers fail. Yes, the Republican Congress failed to act like republicans and enabled Bush on his spending spreee. But after a while, the Obama Administration needs to stop blaming the past when it's doing nothing to help our present and future. Obama's tripled, almost quadrupled the deficit, in the name of "saving" jobs; meanwhile Congress is passing laws that'll increase the size of government but lose more private-sector jobs. And if unemployment hits 11%, they'll report that Obama has "saved" 89% of the jobs in America.

Cent #2 - Sarah Palin is quitting as governor of Alaska in the middle of her first term because of "country first" saying that all the erroneous ethics charges her opponents are throwing at her are wasting the time and money of Alaskans. So her enemies got their way. This seriously damamges her chances and credibility of a 2012 presidential run. The worst thing that could've happened to her was for John McCain to pick her as his vice-presidential running-mate. If he hadn't, she'd still be the most popular governor in the union; she could finish out her term as governor, and then get the ball rolling for a 2012 bid. As is, she was thrust in the limelight, demonstrated she wasn't ready (her Katie Couric interview was her own fault; just name a freaking newspaper!), and she was castigated by her enemies with rare zeal.

But again, her enemies got their way. She's only making Mitt Romney look more presidential.

Cent #2-1/2 - I'm already over Michael Jackson's death. Yes, he was huge, but there were times where I wanted to see what the latest was on Iran or Honduras, and there's someone interviewing Corey Feldman or MJ's former nurse.

Hope you had a good Fourth of July!

Two 2012 GOP hopefuls cheat

Nev. Sen. John Ensign and SC Gov. Mark Sanford have both had to admit to extramarital affairs this week.

So Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Eric Cantor, Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty, etc., pay attention.

You are Republican.

Do. Not. Commit. Adultery.

And Newt, you're done. Please don't run.

Throwing around the word 'racist'

Some conservative talkers are calling Sonia Sotomayor a reverse racist for this quote: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

But if you look at it in context, you see she is clearly not being a reverse racist.

Now a counter I've seen from left-wing bloggers is trotting out some of Rush Limbaugh's old racist quotes. The most famous is his quote from the early 1970's when working as a DJ, he told a caller to take the bone out of his nose and call him back. But there are other quotes that are getting repeated and copied and thrown around that he never said. There's a list out there of Rush's Top 10 Racist Comments, but some of them he never said, and the guy making the list provides no sources. Rush never said we miss James Earl Ray, and he never said that under slavery it was safer to walk the streets after dark.

If people are going to try to smear others, they should have their facts straight, and if their defense is that the other side doesn't care if they have their facts straight, so it justifies them spreading falsehoods, well they have no moral argument.

TOTUS

http://baracksteleprompter.blogspot.com

Political semantics

Some words have had their meanings changed over the past few years in the political world, but as far as I can tell, this is what they really mean.

BIGOT - Someone who disagrees with me.

CONSERVATIVE - Someone who believes in the Constitution, and that the individual is more important the government. And didn't vote for Obama.

FASCIST - Someone who disagrees with me who wants to pass laws about it.

HATE - The only emotion of people who disagree with me.

HITLER - The guy who holds views opposite of mine. And if your views are opposite of mine, guess who you then, by default, agree with?

HYPOCRITE - Someone who reacts one way when their guy does it, but completely opposite when the other guy does it. See also: pundit, reporter, spokesman, talking-head.

INTOLERANCE - How those who disagree with me plan to proceed.

KNUCKLE-DRAGGING - An action reflective of those who disagree with me.

LIBERAL - Someone who believes in the Constitution, and that the individual is more important the government. And voted for Obama.

MODERATE - Someone who believes in the Constitution, and that the individual is more important the government. And would switch parties if it helped him get re-elected.

Perez Hilton vs. Miss California

The Miss USA Pageant, which has received more publicity off this than anything that's happened to them in over a decade, can go down two roads. One road is to warn contestants in advance that all of their opinions must be politically correct or they will be disqualified. The other road can be to no longer invite misogynist judges. It'll be interesting to see what road they take.

Janeane Garofalo hate-mongering again

First, part of her interview from the Austin Chronicle publicizing Ratatouille:

What I took most from the film … was respect for those that are different. Do not react with fear and anger at “the other.” Do not try to eradicate the other, and don’t rob them of their dignity. You can work much better together than you can apart. The rats were afraid of the humans and had many myths built up about their evil, and the humans were afraid of the rats and had many myths built up about their evil – most of which were untrue on both sides. As they overcame their fear of one another, they focused quite peacefully in order to [create] something better than they would have on their own.


And now some of her quotes from Countdown with Keith Olbermann regarding the April 15 tea parties:

“This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.”

” … the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring.”

“I didn’t know there were so many racists left. I didn’t know that. I — you know, because as I’ve said, the Republican hype and the conservative movement has now crystallized into the white power movement.”


So... rats deserve more understanding than non-Air America listeners, and if you think the government spends too much, you're a subhuman skinhead.

Why the bias against tea parties?

Personally I don't get why there's such animosity by a few against Barack Obama. Just as the hate against George W. Bush escalated to mouth-foaming fury by some, there's a handful who've let their rhetoric get out of hand for Obama. Seriously, had I gone to a tea party, one thing I would have done there is make sure there weren't any extreme signs up.

1) I'd point out to them that comparing Obama to Hitler would be the only sign that would make the news, and therefore make everyone look crazy.
2) I'd suspect some might be liberals trying to make the tea parties look bad.

The extremes are what's going to make the news. I believe the same reasons Keith Olbermann and Arianna Huffington are left-wing icons coincide with the success Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin make with their over-the-top rhetoric. Huffington summed up the tea parties as an excuse for hate-mongering. But I'd expect no less from her. I'd expect no less from David Shuster to use the tea parties as an excuse for junior-high jokes about tea-bagging. And I applaud Joe Scarborough for calling out his own network on it.

I didn't expect as much coverage to tilt left-ward from the mainstream media as it did. CNN acted like it wants to be MSNBC2 with this story, and maybe it's because they're now fourth in the cable-news ratings. There is very little news left. If you want to know events with a Republican spin, you go to Fox News. If you want to know events with a Democratic spin, you go to MSNBC or ABC or CNN or CBS or Comedy Central. (Jon Stewart's research team is only rivalled by Meet the Press). Headline News still has some good straight stuff, Lou Dobbs and Nancy Grace aside. And while I thought Tim Russert was the best, David Gregory may yet grow into the role of attack-dog to both sides.

So the "media" - this giant shadowy thing - is coming to Obama's defense. And since the tea parties were largely grass-roots, there aren't effective spokespeople to underline three times the point, that spending grew to an all-time high under Bush, then the Democrats took Congress and it went even higher, then Obama got elected, and spending will quadruple.

I think the point should be yelled loud and clear that Congress is the problem, that the only way to truly get change in Washington is to change your representation in Washington. All 50 states should look long and hard at their senators and congressional reps. I'm in Utah's 3rd, and we now have a rookie (Jason Chaffetz) in there. We have two GOP senators in our largely Republican state, but Sen. Bennett, running to serve a fourth term in 2010, is going to get challenged in the primary because we can only reform the system by starting in our own house. It is my hope that the good people of Massacusetts and Connecticut can find some Democrats to run against Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, get some of these entrenched, cynical politicians out of there.

No, I didn't go to a tea party. Byzantine as the tax system is right now, I have a disabled daughter, and my family would have been in a galaxy of financial hurt without Medicaid. No one should have to choose between bankruptcy and keeping their child alive, and thanks to Medicaid, we don't need to have that discussion.

P.S. - is it just me, or do the extreme right-wing and left-wing have a lot more in common with each other than centrists? Stalinist communism is considered the ultimate left-wing nightmare and Mussolini fascism is considered the ultimate right-wing nightmare (even though Jonah Goldberg would argue that's left-wing too), but don't they have a ton more in common with each other than with a Democratic Republic?

Porkulus bill

The Senate compromise does not contain anything that will benefit average Americans. Nothing in there to help with refinancing loans, no real tax cuts. The tax cut in there will give the average American $13 a week. $800 billion, and we're getting $13 a week. That would pay off my remaining hospital bills in 12 years. Basically they said, "The economy's in the tank and Congress has been on a spending spree under Bush. So to get us out of this, we're going to increase the Federal budget by another 30%."

$78 billion overpaid?

So the TARP money that Congress threw at banks for the stimulus package has mostly gone away. Turns out Jon Stewart and I had the same idea. Why not use that money to give to banks in the names of the people who owed them money? People with less debt will be free to spend more. But it's billions under the bridge now.

The Senate compromise I've heard that I like with the stimulus package is allowing people to buy or refinance homes with 4% interest rate, and cutting taxes in half for those making less than $35,000 (or $67,000 for couples). Since all these homes have lost value, at least with lower payments they'll be able to stay in them longer until the value goes back up.

Meanwhile how do some of these jokers keep getting elected? Thanks to gerrymandering I understand party entrenchment in two-thirds of this country, but there's always primary elections within the party, right? Where's the new generation to get the corrupt ones out?

Stimulus Insanity

If Pres. Obama's proposed stimulus package passes, and you add it to the Bush stimulus package, it adds up to about $2 trillion in the spending of taxpayer money, where very little of it actually goes back to taxpayers. $2 trillion is enough to give every man, woman and child in America $6500. With my wife and kids, my household would get $58,500, which would let me pay off all our bills (hospital and otherwise) and a nice chunk of the mortgage. We'd be set.

But that money isn't going to taxpayers. We threw billions at the banks, who have mostly blown it, and without forgiving a cent of taxpayer debt. We gave billions to corporations and industries to have the money spent on CEO bonuses and corporate retreats. They keep comparing the new spending to FDR, but people forget every program that FDR proposed that worked, there was another one that failed, and he kept us in the Depression for years. Had the two-term limit amendment been in place during his time, he'd be remembered as a mediocre president, if not a failure. World War II saved him, and us.